100+ Best-Loved Poems: Selections from Shakespeare, Poe, Tennyson, Whitman, Dickinson, Blake, Burns, Byron, Wordsworth, Yeats, Orwell and More

by William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Alfred Tennyson

Over 100 selections embrace a wide range of themes and meditations on the meaning of existence, celebrations of life's joys, appreciations of the natural world, and many more.
Here are some of the most-loved poems in the English language, chosen not merely for their popularity, but for their literary quality as well. Dating from the Middle Ages to the 20th century, these splendid poems remain evergreen in their capacity to engage our minds and refresh our spirits.
This book is intended for teachers and true literature enthusiasts.

Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold
The Lamb by William Blake
The Sick Rose by William Blake
The Tyger by William Blake
London by William Blake
My Last Duchess by Robert Browning
Thanatopsis by William Cullen Bryant
A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns
To A Mouse, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough by Robert Burns
She Walks in Beauty by George Gordon Byron
The Destruction of Sennacherib by George Gordon Byron
So We’ll Go No More a Roving by George Gordon Byron
Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“I’m Nobody! Who Are You?” by Emily Dickinson
“This Is My Letter to the World” by Emily Dickinson
“I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died” by Emily Dickinson
“Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson
Jabberwocky by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson
The Good Morrow by John Donne
Holy Sonnet X by John Donne
Holy Sonnet XIV by John Donne
Sung at the Completion of the Concord Monument by Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray
Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes by Thomas Gray
The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy
Love Bade Me Welcome by George Herbert
To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time by Robert Herrick
Upon Julia's Clothes by Robert Herrick
The Chambered Nautilus by Oliver Wendell Holmes
Old Ironsides by Oliver Wendell Holmes
Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins
The To Christ Our Lord by Gerard Manley Hopkins
To An Athlete Dying Young by Alfred Edward Housman
Abou Ben Adhem by James Henry Leigh Hunt
Jenny Kissed Me by James Henry Leigh Hunt
To Celia by Ben Jonson
On My First Son by Ben Jonson
On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer by John Keats
Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats
Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats
La Belle Dame sans Merci by John Keats
“When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be” by John Keats
Gunga Din by Rudyard Kipling
Recessional by Rudyard Kipling
If - by Rudyard Kipling
The Village Blacksmith by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Children’s Hour by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
To Lucasta, Going to the Wars by Richard Lovelace
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love by Christopher Marlowe
To His Coy Mistress Andrew Marvell
Lucifer in Starlight by George Meredith
First Fig by Edna St. Vincent Millay
19. On His Blindness by John Milton
23. On His Deceased Wife by John Milton
“Adieu, Farewell Earth’s Bliss” by Thomas Nashe
Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen
To Helen by Edgar Allan Poe
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe
Richard Cory by Edwin Arlington Robinson
Miniver Cheevy by Edwin Arlington Robinson
A Birthday by Christina Georgina Rossetti
Chicago by Carl Sandburg
Fog by Carl Sandburg
Sonnet XVIII b

173 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 6, 2023

About the author

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men after the ascension of King James VI and I of Scotland to the English throne. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs, and even certain fringe theories as to whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. However, in 1623, John Heminge and Henry Condell, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, that hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all time".